Readers may remember that about this time last year, I was giving the Government of New Brunswick a bit of stick for a botched student aid roll-out. Today I am pleased to give credit where it is due, and congratulate the folks in Fredericton for fixing the problem and developing a much better student aid system. Let’s go back 12 months to pick up the story. In February 2016, the Ontario government had come up with a fabulous new system which
There’s an argument going on in the UK right now about re-introducing grammar schools. Until the 1960s, grammar schools were a selective tier of the secondary system. Everyone took exams at the age of eleven, and the most academically able were selected to go to these schools, the purpose of which (everyone understood) was to enable people to go to university. Those who did not pass were essentially out of luck as far as further education went: their choices were
A few days ago someone asked me what my wish list would be for the federal 2017 budget. The science/innovation part of my answer will take a couple of posts to summarize (I’ll start addressing some of the issues related to the Science and Innovation Agendas over the next few days); but today I thought I’d give you my thoughts on the student aid part of the equation. Briefly, I have three wishes. They are, in order: 1) Implement the
Statistics Canada published the 2014-15 enrollment data last week and I thought I would give you a bit of an overview. The data is based on snapshots of enrollment taken in the fall, so we’re talking a 24-month lag here (most other OECD countries can do this in 12-18 months), but this is Statscan so just be glad you’re getting any data at all. The headline news is that enrollment in 2014-15 was up – barely – from 2.048 million
Morning all. Hope you’ve been well. During the US election and its aftermath, a lot of the discussion has focused on the issue of education. Specifically, many pollsters noted large shifts in favour of the democrats among college-educated whites and even larger shifts rightward from less-educated whites. Trump’s statement in June that he “love(d) the poorly-educated” was in retrospect quite significant. From this, many on the left have deduced that “education is more important than ever”, a statement which is
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